


It's not a walk in the park to love each other

by Lifeisruined



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 14:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12985587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lifeisruined/pseuds/Lifeisruined
Summary: Rafael says it happened fast. He was walking down the steps of the courthouse, going to get lunch, when a man walked up to him. He says the man didn’t say anything. He says he doesn’t really remember what happened next, just that his shoulder hurt and then he couldn’t breathe. He says he remembers someone, a reporter he thinks, rushing over about the time he hit the stairs.Liv says the panic helped the guy slip away. She says they have a name. Jose Rivera. A known associate of Felipe Heredio, as well other gang members prosecuted by Barba. Liv says at the moment they don’t know if Rivera shot as revenge for getting Heredio and the others sent to jail or a result of the death threats from almost two years ago. Either way, they’re tracking him down.





	It's not a walk in the park to love each other

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chiantirioja](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=chiantirioja).



> Prompt: One person gets seriously injured and the other freaks and is worried
> 
> Hope this is what you wanted! Enjoy!

Sonny’s in the car with Rollins, on the way back to the precinct after talking to a victim, when his phone buzzes in his pocket. Rollins pauses her rant when he digs it out of his pocket. An unknown number. “Hello?”

A pause and then: “Is this Dominick Carisi, Jr?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

And the more he listens, the more numb he feels. He feels this rising panic in his throat, feels like he can’t breathe, feels his heart plummet. He isn’t sure what he says, but he’s staring at his phone blankly when Rollins nudges his shoulder. She looks concerned.

“You good?” she asks.

He opens his mouth, closes it. Shakes his head. He should call Liv. Or Lucia. Or—he should go there first, listen to a doctor explain. His knuckles are white from clutching his phone so tightly. He absently wonders if this is how his family felt all the times he was in the hospital. “Can you drop me off at Bellevue?”

The car jerks when Rollins turns sharply. She puts the car in park, turning to stare at him, worry crossing her face. “What the fuck?”

“That—that was someone from Bellevue. She said—” He takes a deep breath. “She said Barba’s there. He was shot outside the courthouse. Fuck, we have to go to the precinct. I have to tell Liv. I can’t just—”

Rollins peels his fingers off his phone, grasps his hand with a comforting squeeze. “Hey, no, don’t worry about Liv. I’ll take care of Liv, okay?” She tilts his head up so he’s not staring at his phone anymore. “Hey. Barba’s a fighter. He’ll live just to spite whoever shot him.”

Sonny snorts, shakes his head, because how true is that? Rafael gave his home address to someone who threatened his life. There’s no way he’d go out without a fight. “Okay,” he says. He doesn’t let go of her hand, and if he squeezes too tight, she doesn’t say anything. She just squeezes back.

 

Sonny doesn’t know what happened. He isn’t sure he wants to know. According to the nurse, he was shot twice, one bullet grazing his shoulder. The second bullet, however, went through his chest, and though it missed his heart, his left lung was punctured. The nurse, while she explained, looked more pitying than anything.

“Here.” Rollins waves a cup of coffee underneath his nose. She sits next to him when he takes the cup, not commenting when he just puts it down beside him instead of drinking it. “Anything?”

“Not yet.” He picks at the end of his tie, blinking back tears when he realizes it’s the tie Rafael bought him a couple months ago. “He’s 47, you know? He’s not—the chances of him recovering fully aren’t high.” He shakes his head when he sees Rollins open her mouth. “Please don’t tell me he’ll be okay.”

She shuts her mouth, wrapping an arm around him. “It’s okay to be upset,” she says instead. “You can cry or whatever. I’m not gonna tease you.”

Sonny bites his lip. “He was gonna propose. We’ve talked about it. He bought a ring. I just wanted to marry him, I was willing to elope, but he thought I deserved something special. He kept saying he was going to make some grand gesture.” He thumbs his ring finger. “What if I don’t get to now? I can’t—Amanda, I don’t wanna live without him.” He chokes on a sob, raising a hand to wipe at his tears, lets Rollins press his head against her shoulder. She holds him, rubs his back, as he cries, and when Liv and Fin arrive, Liv sits on his other side, clasping his hand.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, wiping at his eyes.

“You shut your mouth,” Rollins says with a slight smile. She wipes at his cheeks. “Will you at least eat something? What would Rafael think if he wakes up to find you starved to death?”

“He’d be pissed.”

“I’ll go get something,” Fin offers, patting Sonny on the shoulder.

And Sonny hates being treated this way, carefully and hesitantly. He doesn’t want to fall apart in front of them. He doesn’t want their pity because if they pity him, then that makes it more real. That means the chance of actually losing Rafael is more real, he could actually die, and all he can think about is how Dodds died, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.

“I’m gonna…” He stands. “I’ll be right back.” He doesn’t look back, hopes they don’t follow him, and turns a corner so he’s at least a little further away. He sits down, leans against the wall, and pulls out his phone. He wants to call Lucia or his mother or Bella, but when he unlocks his screen, he starts crying again, his home screen of Rafael making a goofy face staring up at him. He spent his entire life bouncing from one person to the next, trying to find some fairy tale romance. He spent his entire career going from one place to the other. He wasn’t happy for a long time. He was miserable, even at SVU for the first few months, and the only saving grace that kept him from quitting the NYPD entirely was the way Rafael Barba mocked him. Barba was hard on him, treated him like an idiot, and Sonny fell in love as soon as the words “Booyah Fordham Law” left his mouth.

That paper in his desk, the one that he planned on using if he passed the bar to become a lawyer, he threw that away. He knew he could never leave. He knew he wanted to see just what else he could get from Barba.

It’s safe to say Sonny feels like Barba saved him. Sonny doesn’t want to go back to living without Rafael. He isn’t sure he knows how to anymore. His life revolves around that man.

For the first time since he stepped foot in the hospital, Sonny starts to pray. He prays for any chance of letting Rafael come back to him. He prays selfishly, to let him have a few more years with Rafael, to marry him.

“Sonny?”

His head jerks up. A teary-eyed Lucia stands there. She waves him off when he starts to stand, sitting down beside him. They sit in silence for a while, leaning against each other, until she says, “My son was such an unhappy kid. He loved his friends, and me and his abuela, but he was always so sad. I never knew what to do, which I think made it worse. Even when I left his father and Rafi went to Harvard, he was too busy trying to become something important to remember to be happy.”

Sonny knows this. Rafael’s explained about his childhood. Sonny thinks that’s part of the reason they work so well together.

Lucia continues, “He got better when he started working with SVU. He wasn’t as harsh, though he’d never admit it.”

Sonny snorts. He’s heard about the asshole ADA from Brooklyn that SVU first met. He’s seen glimpses of it when Rafael is particularly pissed.

“But then he started talking about this annoying detective. He complained constantly about how irritating this detective was. I don’t think Rafi has ever complained about one person so much in his life. And I just had to meet the man who could make my son so angry.” She gives Sonny a smile, reaching over to grab his hand. “And the first time I saw him look at you, I knew.”

“Really? Because I thought he hated me.”

“Oh, he did, but I think for him, that hate was a result of not knowing how to deal with his emotions. He never was good at that.”

Sonny wraps an arm around her. “I love him, too.”

She pats his cheek. “Can we get up now? I might need to be admitted if I sit here too much longer.”

 

Sonny jerks awake, startling Lucia, who was sleeping against him. He blinks, confused, until he sees the face of a doctor standing there. Sonny sits upright, rubbing at his face. “Yeah,” he mumbles. He follows the doctor to the hallway when he gestures.

“Surgery went well,” the doctor starts. “He lost a lot of blood, but he pulled through. I can’t promise he’ll make a full recover, and it’ll be slow, but he should be okay.”

“Okay how?”

“Well, his lung will be very susceptible to infections, and he might have some trouble breathing in the future. He’s going to be here for a while, just to make sure he is healing the way he should be.”

“Can I see him?”

“Not yet. When he’s moved to a room, we’ll let you see him.”

“When?”

“Two hours at the most.”

And two hours later, when a nurse comes to bring him and Lucia to his room, Sonny feels like crying all over again. Lucia does shed a few tears. Rafael’s lying in bed, looking pale and weak and small, and when Sonny grabs his hand, it’s limp. Sonny brings his hand up, kissing his knuckles.

They sit with him for a while, just content to watch him breath, listen to the heart monitor, until Rafael shifts, blinking his eyes open, squinting at the lights. His green eyes are glazed, unfocused. He looks confused, even when he sees his mom, but when he turns his head, sees Sonny, he gets this stupid smile on his face, the smile that he wore when Sonny first said he loved him. The smile fades real quick though, his hand wiggling out of Sonny’s grasp to poke at his cheek.

“You’ve been crying,” he mumbles.

Sonny chuckles, taking his hand again. “You scared us, Rafi.”

“Why? I’m fine.” His words slur as he says this, blinking sleepily, and Sonny knows he’ll stay awake just to argue about how okay he is, so Sonny runs his fingers through his hair with a smile.

“I know,” he says. “Go to sleep, okay?” Sonny watches him fall back asleep, his hand going slack, and he knows Rafael’s okay right now, but just seeing him in this bed, in the hospital, makes Sonny’s heart hurt. He never wants to see this again. He never wants Rafael to go through this again. He doesn’t think he could handle going through this again.

Sonny leans forward to press a kiss to Rafael’s cheek, silently thanking God that he kept Rafael here with Sonny.

 

Rafael says it happened fast. He was walking down the steps of the courthouse, going to get lunch, when a man walked up to him. He says the man didn’t say anything. He says he doesn’t really remember what happened next, just that his shoulder hurt and then he couldn’t breathe. He says he remembers someone, a reporter he thinks, rushing over about the time he hit the stairs.

Liv says the panic helped the guy slip away. She says they have a name. Jose Rivera. A known associate of Felipe Heredio, as well other gang members prosecuted by Barba. Liv says at the moment they don’t know if Rivera shot as revenge for getting Heredio and the others sent to jail or a result of the death threats from almost two years ago. Either way, they’re tracking him down.

The doctor says Rafael will be fine, for the most part. He’ll have some issues with his lungs, more susceptible to illness, meaning he shouldn’t spend too much time outside in the cold without being bundled up, and he might have issues breathing. Now, though, the doctor says his lung capacity will take some time to recover to anything it was before. They give him an inhaler, telling him to use it if he ever has trouble catching his breath (and he will, they tell him; for months, at the least, he’ll sometimes struggle to breath properly). His shoulder, on the other hand, will be sore for a while. They have his arm in a sling, to take the strain off his shoulder, and they give him a recommendation if he wants to get a brace that’s easier to move with.

Rafael’s in bed for a week before he starts complaining about being bored, trying to convince anyone who’ll listen to bring him his phone or laptop (no one does, for fear of pissing off Sonny who insists he needs to rest). He even offers a raise to Carmen, who brings him a slice of coffee cake. Sonny wasn’t there, but apparently she threatened to have him escorted and locked out of the building if he so much as stepped foot in the office before he was fully ready.

(Sonny sets a reminder in his phone to send her flowers or convince Rafael to give her some time off.)

“What’s the difference?” Rafael argues, crossing his arms.

“Here, if you stop breathing, someone qualified can help you. At home, I’d panic.”

“I’m not going to stop breathing.”

“Really? Then why are you monitored at nights?”

Rightly so, Rafael looks sheepish, arms falling to his lap, eyes drifting past Sonny. “I didn’t know you knew about that.”

Sonny rolls his eyes, reaching out to take his hand. He brings their hands up to kiss his knuckles, his heart warming because he still gets to do this. He’s still able to hold the hand, kiss, the man he loves. He makes a note to pray later, to thank God for allowing Rafael to stay with him. “Just another couple of days,” he says. “This weekend I’ll ask your doctor.”

Rafael sighs, but it’s the last Sonny hears of it, so he counts it as a win (until the first thing Rafael says to him when he enters the room Saturday morning is that he’s allowed to leave now, will Sonny please get him clothes to wear home?)

Rafael passes out almost immediately when he lands on their bed. The medication he’s on makes him tired, his body stressing itself to heal properly. The first two days, Rafael sleeps most of the time. Sonny’s glad one of them is sleeping, though. He can’t find it in himself to go to sleep. He’s so afraid of waking up to Rafael not breathing, of having a nightmare where he actually loses him, that he’s slept maybe four hours. Instead, while occasionally checking on Rafael, he watches TV and reads all the books he hasn’t had the time to read.

And things are okay. Sonny goes back to work, Carmen brings files to Rafael so he can work from home, and when Sonny comes home, he tries not to hover. He knows Rafael will tell him if something is seriously wrong, but his mind is still fixated on the thought that something bad might happen.

It’s safe to say they’re both losing their minds. Rafael, because he’s tired and in pain, is getting crankier, and Sonny tries to be the attentive boyfriend, but sometimes he has to take a deep breath and remind himself why it’s a terrible idea to strangle him.

Rafael hates being coddled. He hates feeling useless. He spent so many years of his childhood unable to protect himself or his loved ones. The idea of being weak, of needing someone to take care of him, is Rafael Barba’s nightmare. He tries not to be short-tempered—Sonny appreciates that—but Sonny knows it’s getting on his nerves. It’s why Sonny’s found himself basically tip-toeing around their apartment, trying to steer clear of making things worse somehow.

And then Rafael goes back to the hospital. He’s finally gone back to work, after two weeks of working from home, and it’s Wednesday when Carmen calls Sonny. When she explains, Rafael went outside to get coffee and a hot dog from the vendor outside and when he came back he couldn’t breathe properly, he’s going to the hospital because he didn’t have his inhaler, Sonny just snaps. Because this is fucking ridiculous.

He offers to take case files to Rafael, waves Fin off when he jokes about missing his boyfriend already, and when he gets to the office, Rafael and Carmen are back already.

“Oh, God, why did you call him?” Rafael whines from the couch. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not _fine_ when you stop _breathing_ , Mr. Barba,” Carmen huffs. She stands, smoothing her skirt. “Detective Carisi, would you like some coffee?”

“No, Carmen. I won’t be here long.”

She nods, stepping out of the office, shutting the door behind her. Carisi places the files on the desk, takes a deep breath. When he turns, Rafael is watching him warily, rubbing at his chest absently.

“What is wrong with you?”

His eyebrows fly up. “Excuse me?”

“It’s not like you’re carrying an oxygen tank around. The inhaler is this fucking big.” He uses his thumb and pointer finger to show the size.

“Easy to forget,” Rafael counters. “And I did forget it. I—”

“Cut the shit. You didn’t forget it. It’s sitting on your nightstand at home because you _chose_ not to bring it. And you decided you were able to go stand in the cold, when I know you didn’t bring a scarf today, because apparently you’re Superman!”

“That’s not—”

“Really? From where I’m standing, you don’t give a fuck about your health. This entire time you’ve been acting like this is—isn’t important. You could’ve died! You could still die.”

“I’m not going to die.”

“What if Carmen hadn’t been here?” Rafael looks down at that, and Sonny feels this almost vicious satisfaction course through him. Rafael looks ashamed, finally, and Sonny just keeps pushing. “This isn’t a joke, Rafael. You were shot! You can’t do this.”

“I’ll bring my inhaler tomorrow.”

“That’s not—” Sonny loves this man, he does, but he’s a complete idiot. “You know what? I have to get back to work. I’ll see you later.”

“Wait.”

But Sonny’s out of the office already, nodding to Carmen, and he doesn’t look back. He doesn’t want to get angry all over again, he doesn’t want to yell again. He’ll go back to work, calm down, and when he sees Rafael later, at home, they’ll have a rational conversation with minimal yelling.

He’s almost to the stairs when someone grabs his arm. He turns his head, sees Rafael standing there in only his suit jacket, and, yeah, there’s that anger again. Did everything Sonny said just go completely in one ear and out the other? “What the fuck, Rafael?”

Rafael narrows his eyes. “This is where you are.”

Sonny stares at him, torn between wanting to yell and wanting to hug him close to warm him up, before he hears someone cough as they pass. He remembers where they are, where Rafael isn’t supposed to be, and he takes his hand, tugs him back inside. “What?” he says once they stop, dropping his hand.

Rafael takes his hands, though, looking down at their joined hands rather than make eye contact with Sonny again. “Sonny, I’m not—I’m sorry. I should’ve brought my inhaler. I know that’s not what you’re angry about, but I am sorry.”

“I am angry about that.”

Rafael rolls his eyes. “Of course. But you’re mad that I seem to disregard my own health, and that’s not it. I know I was shot. I know I’m not as healthy as I was.”

“You sure aren’t acting like it.”

“I know.” Rafael sighs, pressing their foreheads together. “I’m sorry.”

“Rafi, I almost lost you.”

Rafael doesn’t say anything, just wraps his arms around him, holding him close, and Sonny, once he’s over the shock of Rafael actually initiating contact in public, hugs him back. They stand there, holding each other, content to just be until Sonny mumbles, “I don’t want to lose you.”

Rafael kisses his cheek twice before pulling back. “I’m sorry. You won’t. I’ll bring my inhaler. I’ll wear three jackets and scarves to work. I’ll even wear a hat.”

Sonny kisses him then. He’s smiling. “You hate hats.”

“Yes, but I love you. I’m willing to suffer if it means I get to spend more time with you.”

“Promise?”

“Lo prometo.” He kisses Sonny quickly. “Te quiero mucho.”

“I love you, too. And you don’t have to wear three coats and a hat. Just. Try to not be so stupid, okay?”

Rafael chuckles. “I will do my best.” His phone buzzes. He laughs when he reads the text, tilts the phone so Sonny can see. It’s Olivia, asking Rafael to please let Sonny go so he can come back to work.

“You better not piss her off,” Sonny says. At Rafael’s questioning look, he adds, “If you piss me off again, you’ll either be sleeping on the couch or staying with her.”

Rafael pushes him away. “Go. Leave me alone. I’m busy.”

Sonny steals another kiss, laughing when Rafael shoves at him again, before waving. As he goes, glancing back to see Rafael already heading toward the elevators, he takes his phone out. He texts Carmen, _If he doesn’t bring his inhaler again you have my permission to kill him._

She responds with a thumbs up.

Rollins, almost the second he walks through the doors, says, “Look who finally dragged himself away.”

Sonny makes a face.

She laughs. “Everything good?”

“Yeah. Everything’s good.”


End file.
